Design Roles at MSL

Situation

When I joined Michigan Software Labs, the company lacked clear definitions for design roles. This absence of structure led to confusion about expectations for designers working on projects. The design team consisted of both experienced and novice designers. Simultaneously, I was working to introduce the concept of product design to the company.

Traditionally, designers at the company were responsible for overseeing both product design and UX design aspects of a project. This dual responsibility often required designers to context-switch between these two disciplines throughout the day. While experienced designers could manage this effectively, younger or less experienced designers found it challenging to navigate these role transitions.

Recognizing the need for clarity and structure, I decided to create comprehensive role definitions that would not only distinguish between product design and UX design but also incorporate the emerging concept of product design within our organization.

Task

To address the confusion and provide clearer guidance for our design team, I undertook the task of creating comprehensive role definitions. My goal was to establish clear guidelines outlining what, how, why, and when designers at our company should perform specific tasks when working on projects.

These role definitions were intended to serve multiple purposes:

1. Improve operational efficiency on projects
2. Enhance collaboration among designers
3. Facilitate better interactions with project team members from other disciplines

Ultimately, I wanted to provide my team with a clear understanding of what was expected of them when working on projects. In essence, they needed a roadmap to guide their operations and decision-making processes.

Rising Action

To begin the task of creating well-defined roles, I implemented a collaborative approach that involved various stakeholders within the company. This process consisted of several key steps:

Consulting the Design Team

I asked my team of designers to create bullet-point lists detailing what they believed should be expected of them when working on a project. This exercise helped capture their perspectives and current understanding of their roles.

Engaging Project Managers

I worked closely with project managers to:   

• Understand how they viewed design within the scope of project management   
• Gather their ideas and opinions on how designers should operate   
• Identify any gaps between project management expectations and current design practices

Collaborating with Software Engineers

I held discussions with software engineers to:   

• Gain insight into their perceptions of how designers were functioning
• Understand their expectations and needs from the design team
• Identify opportunities for improving collaboration between design and development This approach allowed me to gather comprehensive insights from different perspectives, ensuring that the role definitions would address the needs and expectations of all team members involved in our projects.

Results

After gathering all the information, I came up with the following roles for Product Designers and UX Designers at the company.

A Product Designer is Accountable for…

Setting Design Direction for the Product

With input from the Design Manager This looks like:

• Understand the Project and Goals: Grasp the project’s purpose, audience, and business aims. Learn the product’s role, features, and functionality.
• Research and Gather Insights: Study current design trends, industry norms, and successful products in related fields. Use various sources for inspiration and analyze user feedback and market studies.
• Collaborate with Stakeholders: Discuss with stakeholders to gather input and understand their vision and product requirements.
• Define Design Principles: Create guiding design principles aligned with project goals and reflect the client’s brand. Clearly convey these principles to the team and stakeholders.
• Develop a Design Strategy: Construct a design strategy based on research and defined principles. Identify UX design methods and key design elements while considering usability, accessibility, branding, and innovation.
• Communicate and Document the Design Direction: Share the design strategy with stakeholders using visual presentations or style guides. Encourage questions and feedback to ensure understanding and buy-in. Project briefings, design strategy should live in Confluence. UX Decisions, visual presentations, and style guides should live Figma.

On their team, a Product Designer should be…

Impacting the Product Roadmap

In partnership with the project team leads. This looks like

• Build a Design Roadmap: Develop a user-centered roadmap incorporating UX design stages like user research, persona development, wireframing, prototyping, visual design, and UI development. Factor in accessibility, localization, and analytics.
• Empower Product Development: Promote collaboration and open communication among Design Leads, the Principle, Delivery Lead, and Tech Lead for a shared product vision and user needs. Foster knowledge synchronization and effective discovery.
• Add Design Definition and Context: Use design knowledge to analyze project goals, user research, and stakeholder input. Identify key design impact areas and define Features and Epics that enhance the user experience.
• Be Ambitious and Creative: Stay updated on tech advancements and design trends. Conduct extensive research for insights into user needs and preferences. Encourage ideation sessions for unconventional and innovative design solutions.
• Advocating for New Design Patterns: Present research to stakeholders to illustrate benefits of new design patterns. Collaborate on idea exploration and innovative approaches. Clearly articulate benefits, manage risks, and ensure alignment with client’s goals.

Impacting the Project Execution

In partnership with the project team This looks like

• Prepare Epics and User Stories: Assist in the creation of Jira Epics and Story creation, specifying User Stories in a, “As a (user), I (want to), (so that)” format and rule based acceptance criteria with the product team from a design perspective.
• Identify opportunities for feedback: Recommend user research to understand user needs and identify areas where early feedback can shape design. Advocate for the inclusion of user feedback in the design process.
• Leverage platform conventions: Understand when to apply or deviate from platform conventions for unique user experiences. Evaluate project goals and align them with platform adherence or strategic deviations.
• Coordinating the efforts of Design Team within a Sprint: Define goals and prioritize tasks during sprints. Assign tasks, conduct periodic design reviews, manage time, and foster agile mindset for continuous improvement.
• Monitor Implementation: Oversee design implementation and work closely with the UX designer and development team to maintain design consistency in the final product.
• Provide Guidance and Feedback: Offer constructive criticism to the Principle, delivery lead, UX designer, and developers throughout the design process. Regularly review their progress.
• Foster Collaboration: Encourage a collaborative environment and cross-functional collaboration to ensure a holistic design approach. Facilitate idea sharing and innovation.
• Iterate and Refine: Advocate for an iterative design process and feedback incorporation. Suggest usability testing and market research to refine the design direction.
• Stay Involved in the Process: Participate in the entire design and development process, review design iterations, prototypes, and testing results. Act as a communication bridge between the UX designer and stakeholders. Attend sprint meetings to provide context and continuity around the design team’s role in the development process On their project, a Designer is accountable for…

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Designer is accountable for…

Producing quality designs that meets the MichiganLabs standards

This looks like

• Understanding User Needs: Conduct user research to understand their needs, motivations, and behaviors. This may involve methods like user interviews, surveys, usability testing, contextual inquiries, personas, and empathy maps to understand users’ needs. Competitive analysis could also be used to understand what works well or needs improvement in similar products in the market.
• Creating Information Architecture: Design the structural layout of the product’s information to ensure it is logically organized, easy to understand, and navigable. This could involve creating site maps, hierarchies, categorizations, and navigation, and may also involve defining metadata for pages or content.
• Designing User Flows: Define the path that users will take through the product. Create visualizations that help the product team understand the user’s journey.
• Wireframing and Prototyping: Create lo-fi wireframes to outline the basic structure of each page or screen, then build interactive prototypes to simulate the user experience.
• High-Fidelity Designs and Specifications: Develop high-fidelity designs and create detailed specifications for the development team.
• Collaboration with Stakeholders: Regularly communicate with other stakeholders such as design lead, delivery lead, developers, and clients. Ensure everyone understands the UX design and its rationale.
• Accessibility: Design for accessibility to guarantee the product can be used by as many people as possible, including those with disabilities.
• Analytics and Improvement: Post-launch, collect and analyze user data to assess the success of the design. Identify areas for improvement and continue to optimize the design based on these insights.
• Documentation: Properly document all stages of the design process for future reference and for others in the team to understand the reasoning behind design decisions.
• Having a High Attention to Detail: Designers should have a high attention to detail, facilitating every aspect of the design - from the layout and color scheme to typography and interactive elements - is carefully considered and executed.
• Producing Consistent and Roadmap-Aligned Work: Designers should create designs that are consistent with prior work on the project. Consistency in design language, interactions, and visual elements fosters a seamless user experience and helps developers be more productive.
• Task Organization and Management: Designers should have strong task organization and management skills, both on a personal level and within the context of broader project timelines. To effectively manage their tasks, designers should use tools and techniques such as to-do lists, digital calendars, and time blocking to manage their daily duties and responsibilities, ensuring they stay focused and productive.

A UX Designer should be…

Pursuing continuous improvement in the craft of UX & UI Design

This looks like

• Continuous Learning: Stay updated with the latest research, trends, and best practices in UX/UI design. Attend relevant workshops, online courses, and conferences. Read books, articles, and blogs by leading experts in the field.
• Practice: As with any craft, practice is crucial. Work on different projects to gain varied experience and apply learned skills. Personal projects or volunteering for non-profit organizations can provide additional opportunities to practice when not working on professional assignments.
• Peer Review and Collaboration: Engage with other designers for design critiques and brainstorming sessions. Peer reviews can provide fresh perspectives and constructive feedback that help you see your design from different angles.
• Learn from Users: Participate in usability testing and observe users interacting with your designs.
• Mastery of Tools: Regularly update your knowledge of design tools. New versions often have improved functionalities that make your work easier and more efficient. Also, explore new tools that emerge in the market.
• Understanding Business and Marketing: Good design is not just about aesthetics or usability; it’s also about achieving business goals. Learn about business strategy and marketing fundamentals and how design can contribute to these areas.
• Focus on Accessibility: Make sure your designs are inclusive and accessible to as many users as possible, including those with disabilities. Learning about and implementing accessibility standards is essential for improving as a UX/UI designer.
• Stay Curious: Never lose your sense of curiosity. Ask questions, challenge assumptions, and strive to understand why things are the way they are. This mindset can lead to innovative design solutions.
• Reflect on Your Work: Take the time to reflect on completed projects. What worked well? What could have been done better?
• Recommending Creative Uses of Technology: Staying informed about emerging technologies and understanding how they can be creatively applied to improve user experience is vital to a designer’s role. This includes exploring technologies like AI, VR/AR, voice UI, motion UI, biometrics, and more.
• Advocate for the Needs of the User Base: Designers must always advocate for the user’s needs and desires. This includes deeply understanding your users through research, continuously validating your designs against their needs, and making a strong case for user-centered design principles within Michigan Software Labs.

Working as team to advance the product in a strategic direction

This looks like

• Understanding Business Goals: First and foremost, a designer should understand the business goals and strategy. This knowledge allows designers to align their work with the company’s objectives and contribute to the strategic direction of the product.
• Understanding the Product: Designers should invest time in thoroughly understanding the product they are working on and the client’s or stakeholders’ specific needs. This includes understanding the product’s functionality, user base, problem-solving, and the client’s business objectives and brand guidelines.
• Collaborative Planning: Participate actively in product planning and strategy sessions. As a UX/UI designer, your insights into user behavior and needs can significantly inform the product strategy.
• Regular Communication: Consistent and clear communication with the product team is essential. Regularly update the team on design progress, explain the rationale behind design decisions, and discuss how these decisions align with the product’s strategic direction.
• Proactive Proposals: Don’t wait for requests or directions. If you see opportunities for product improvement based on user feedback or observations, propose these to the team. Show initiative and illustrate how your proposals can help achieve strategic goals.
• User Advocacy: Advocate for user needs in all strategic discussions. Remind the team that user satisfaction is critical to product success, and any strategic decisions should consider their impact on the user experience.
• Cross-functional Collaboration: Collaborate with different teams—like development, sales, and delivery—to understand their perspectives and constraints. This broader view can help you design solutions that meet user needs, are technically feasible, and align with business objectives.
• Learning and Adapting: Stay flexible and be willing to adapt your designs based on the product’s strategic evolution. Learning from changes and challenges is crucial in successfully advancing development.
• Presenting Work for Review by the Team and Fellow Designers: Regularly present your work for review by the team and other designers. Be open to feedback from teammates. This can provide different perspectives, highlight potential issues, and ultimately lead to a more refined and effective product.

Result

The rollout of this initiative was executed in several strategic phases: Initial Designer Feedback:   

• Presented the initial draft to the design team   
• Gathered their feedback and suggestions   
• Integrated necessary changes based on their input Stakeholder Review:   
• Sought feedback from project managers and other key stakeholders   
• Incorporated their insights and suggestions into the document Finalization and Approval
• Developed a final draft incorporating all feedback\
• Obtained approval from all relevant stakeholders Company-wide Introduction:   
• Presented the finalized role definitions to the entire company
• Published the document on our internal Confluence page for easy access and reference The reaction to the role definition work was overwhelmingly positive. The design team expressed satisfaction with having documented expectations of how they should operate, while the company as a whole appreciated having a clear reference point for design roles and responsibilities. The initiative was well-received across all departments, improving cross-functional understanding and collaboration. This positive reception validated the need for such role definitions and confirmed the effectiveness of our collaborative approach in developing them.